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The U.S. federal government has a long history of discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. The active organization and institutionalization of that discrimination began with the “Lavender Scare” of the 1950s, when Senator Charles Hoey and Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. led efforts to discover and terminate...

One out of every five low-income Americans depends on Medicaid, the national insurance program for the poor jointly run by federal and state governments. Medicaid provides insurance coverage for a broad array of health services from pregnancy care and childhood immunizations to emergency hospitalizations. As the practice of health care...

When companies or individuals make investments in a business in another country, experts call this “foreign direct investment.” Today, China is the fastest growing source of such investments. From the early 1990s to 2015, Chinese and Hong Kong’s foreign direct investments increased from a few hundred million to $2.5 trillion...

International law is in a rough period. Since 2016 institutions as varied as the European Court of Human Rights, the World Trade Organization, and the International Criminal Court have been harshly criticized by politicians chafing at their strictures. The reasons for growing dissatisfaction vary. Africans unhappy with human rights prosecutions...

Approximately half of middle-aged people in American provide financial, health, or emotional support for adult parents and minor or adult children. The term “sandwich generation caregiver” emerged in the 1980’s to describe middle-aged people who support minor children while providing physical, emotional, financial, or legal assistance to adults. Of course...

Many citizens in Europe and the United States believe that the quality of democracy has declined over the last few decades. Political cartelization and patronage-oriented styles of governance can help explain how parties collude to survive as public debates narrow and the grassroots bases of parties wither. Global development ties...

For decades, politicians and the media have perpetuated the idea that collective bargaining with public employees leads to higher public-sector spending. Conservatives attack collective bargaining claiming that it is responsible for government deficits and budget shortfalls. Liberals defend it, arguing that paying public employees well is necessary to deliver high-quality...

When deciding who to hire, about half of U.S. employers consider credit histories. The Fair Credit Reporting Act lets employers pull credit records for applicants, but since 2007 legislators in 11 states and a handful of cities have passed laws limiting the practice – out of concern that it perpetuates...

Starting in late April of 2018, the small Central American country Nicaragua entered the media spotlight as massive street protests rocked the decade-long authoritarian regime of President Daniel Ortega. Brutal government repression has killed over 200 and led to intensified calls for Ortega to step down. Although nobody could have...

Sex and gender identities are becoming increasingly complex in America, creating new challenges for public administrative agencies. So far, the vast majority of U.S. federal agencies lack comprehensive transgender employee policies – which are currently in place for only nine of approximately 235 federal agencies (including sub-agencies). Yet as the...